tamarjacobson

 The final trail

It has been a couple of weeks since my return from Corfu, where I joined 7 other women for what turned out to be a 50 mile hike around the southern part of the island. The past two days as I have been out for my morning 4-mile walk around my neighborhood, I discovered that the week spent in Corfu is still very much with me. For starters, it became a way of celebrating my sixty fifth birthday, so just by virtue of that fact, it was an important adventure. Second, it was a way to bridge two important relationship worlds in my life – my dear, good friend, and a very important (for me) in-law from America, meeting with my sisters and great niece from Israel. Indeed, I had not realized how important it was for me that one group get to know the other. In a way it helped me feel less anonymous in my new found American life, as well as showing a different side of me to my Israeli family. Third, it was just a good time to walk through olive groves, a wide variety of brightly colored wild flowers, and along spectacular coast lines of the Greek island of Corfu, not to mention the food: daily eggs, salads, feta cheeses, assortment of fish, wholesome bread with local wines and olive oils, and even roasted chicken!

 Brightly-colored wild flowers.

I enjoyed spending time with every person, each one contributing their personality, idiosyncrasies, knowledge, and emotion to the group as a whole. Whatever transpired, we all got along well, solving problems and accepting one another with friendship, and even love. There just wasn't one moment of mean spiritedness. 

 The Women Walkers!

My two older sisters are truly devoted to each other. Sue, the oldest, would rise out of bed every morning early enough to make a special cup of coffee for Elise, our hiking leader. If I stayed over with Elise the night before, I would wait to hear the "tap-tap" on the door, and then Sue would walk in laying out her coffee-making equipment she had lovingly brought all the way from Israel. She would chat about this and that as Elise and I would slowly open our eyes, sit up in bed to receive the desperately needed morning elixir. On the trail, Elise would take great care to know how her sisters were doing and feeling every step of the way. 

At times during the hike I would burst into song – usually an Israeli song because the flora and heat would remind me of my old homeland. Ruhama, who loves her country with a passion, would immediately join in very spiritedly if she hadn't already started up a song of her own. It was always spontaneous and joyous helping us with the long, sometimes challenging, trails. 

My two American companions had open minds and hearts to allow in three different cultures all at once: Greek, Israeli, and my family! They listened to stories and shared their own, and as they walked they also took care of anyone who needed their help. My heart swelled with love and pride for them both. And we laughed a lot. 

Youngest among us was Jasmine, my great niece, Sue's granddaughter. She had put up with quite a lot of teasing from her friends about joining a group of older women for a hike around a Greek Island, but she came along nevertheless. At every moment there she was with her camera, photographing her story, her view of the walk with the women. I urged her to write about her impressions, but in the end I think her photographs told an even better tale. I am sure she learned a lot about her family members, about aging in general, and who knows what else … 

Endurance is the key to a long and challenging hike up and down mountain paths, in and out of terraced olive groves, and especially along miles of sandy beaches in the hot sun. Just when I felt that I could not walk one other step, suddenly from somewhere within me I mustered up new strength and on I went. The energy came from a small, bright yellow butterfly fluttering alongside us as we walked, or a spectacular view of the Ionian Sea. I realized again and again just how resilient the human spirit is. 

It was a special week for me, and I think I came home stronger than ever, with an open heart full of love for family and friends.  

Turning sixty-five seems to have brought with it sadness, and a feeling of farewell to a younger me. There is regret that I wasted so much time feeling unworthy and undeserving. Regret about choices I made, or decisions that I could have made. Necessary losses.

It feels like a milestone. Certainly society views it that way, by awarding me with benefits like discounts on trains and planes, or retirement plans. So many people either assume I have retired already, or ask me when I will – as if there is no other way for me at this point. And they are right. I am heading into retirement. These are changes that seem formidable to me. No turning back from them. A new era.

A time that feels out of my control because the end of this journey is terminal. On the other hand, it has the potential to be peaceful, once I can come to terms with the new reality of my life. I am now, officially, a senior.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Sifting through faded papers

There are eleven days to go until I turn 65. It feels like I have been traveling for some time to reach this point in the journey. Sixty four years to be exact!

And, much has changed since I was a child:

Growing up in Africa there are so many tales to tell. All I know is when I met Patrick from Zimbabwe at the World Forum on Early Care and Education last week, I felt as close to my childhood as ever. He wrote a greeting in the book I created in the Lakeshore room:

From the heart of Zimbabwe, a country and a place which is home to you in many ways …

In Israel I became a mother and a teacher.

And, in America I became an adult.

A colleague, from a different country, almost the same age as me, also wrote in my World Forum memory book last week:

Dear Friend! What joy!! Abundance of spirit! Strength of heart! Love L

And I thought to myself, "Yes. This is exactly how I want to greet age 65 … the day I officially become a Senior – with joy, abundance of spirit, and strength of heart."

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Feeling good is good enough

Some of my favorite quotes for the day:

In this war against children we all enter on the losing side and carry our wounds along to the next generation. (Page 8)

The problem with families is not that you get stuck in the same persona for life, which is what everyone complains about, but that you're always getting confused with someone else and end up taking the blame for them. You may think of yourself as a freestanding individual, a unique point of consciousness in the universe, but in many ways you are just subbing for absent family members or departed ancestors. (Page 33)

People talk about "leading a life," as if it were an ox being tugged on a rope through its nose ring, but in my experience most of what we do is just try to dodge whatever's coming our way – the blindingly bright, completely unexpected explosions that disrupt even the most orderly plan. (Page 45)

Human beings are connected not only by love and loyalty – or, more generally, by neurotic symbiosis and material dependency – but by our joint agreement about the "real." (Page 55)

The specific content of the memories does not have to be tragic; it's just that no matter how you evoke it, the past is inherently always about death: what was and no longer is. (Page 62)

From Barbara Ehrenreich: Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything.

I have just finished reading Ehrenreich's book (above). It stirred many associations and memories of my own, as I read about her "quest" for truth in her life, through the exploration of her relationship with her mother. I especially identified with the complexity of emotion, and the understanding of Barbara's mother's life that developed out of her internal ethnography. 

For, over the years, as I process the relationship between me and my mother I come to understand her own challenges, shattered dreams, and world view – her sense of the "real."  I realize the points at which I took the blame, or subbed "for absent family members," that Ehrenreich described so succinctly. So many unconscious interactions and behaviors creating a mystery that can only cause those of us seeking awareness to search for the "truth" about our lives forever!

As a mother to my son, I struggled with fear about my own unconscious behaviors and interactions with him, trying not to repeat what I had experienced growing up, always trying to get this mothering thing right. 

 In point of fact, there is no way to get it right. Just too many wild, mysterious variables in the mix! Genetics, environment, generations of parenting, and complexities and challenges of living day to day. Returning from the World Forum on Early Care and Education a couple of days ago, I am reinforced and inspired with the knowledge that it is imperative that we love and respect all children – for their brain development, and social and emotional well-being. 

While chatting with a colleague at one of the coffee breaks at the conference, I mentioned this "Good Mother" blog, describing it as a "Handbook of Guilt for Parents." She burst out laughing, nodding her head up and down vehemently. "Oh yes!" she exclaimed. "The guilt! The guilt!" 

Mothering is complex, challenging, and excruciating. There is no doubt that I suffered as a child, as I know my mother did when she was growing up. As hard as I tried to prevent my son from suffering, he probably did too. Childhood is seldom a simple, happy time, even though some people like to nostalgically reminisce about the good old days. 

So, Happy Mother's Day to all of us – especially for trying so hard – and amidst all the tears and confusion- for loving and experiencing joy – and, especially, for doing the very best we can with what we have … had …

Quote of the day:

Recently, a colleague at work almost exclaimed to me with surprise: You're going to be 65? Oh my goodness! It does not seem so long ago that we were singing to you, "When I'm 64!"

I can't believe it either! In fact it was only five years ago that I spent my fifty ninth year reflecting and blogging about turning 60. It seemed so amazing to me at the time that I hardly noticed the whole year that I was 59. I have always felt that I never really was 59 – I skipped that year and jumped from 58 to 60 losing – yes – losing a whole year. And it looks like it is happening again. For I am losing – or have I already lost my sixty fourth year? Because all I can think about lately is that in a month's time I will be turning 65. As I experience this fixation on the future, 60 fades away in the distant past as some youthful, frivolous game of life, and the impending number of 65 looms in front of me as something serious that cannot be undone. It's the real deal. I am entering into my senior year and from then on life is going to become more and more physically challenging. I am sure about this, for ever since I turned sixty I have noticed shifts in my strength and energy, and all kinds of new and improved bodily aches and pains I never knew could exist. Indeed, I believe the past five years have been a type of training to prepare me for the transition from becoming older to being old.

It really has nothing to do with the endless advertisements in the mail from health care companies declaring my eligibility for Medicare. It has everything to do with the change in me physically and emotionally. For example I noticed this past week that a couple of times I woke up in the middle of the night only to lie thinking about what it might feel like to die. It wasn't alarming, gloomy or sad. Just a matter of fact sort of wondering about how I might feel. Mostly it has seemed quite peaceful actually. As if this is something natural that I will have to face before long. Part of the process of life's journey. A type of acceptance that this is something I might want to prepare for as an inevitability of the future. 

When I turned 60 I wanted to celebrate. It felt like quite an achievement! And so I took a group of us to Paris for the weekend. It was fun – no doubt about it. This year, on my birthday, I am heading off to hike for six days in Corfu with a group of interesting and dynamic women. It will be a challenge all right. Twelve miles a day for six days. I want to feel the energy of older and younger women around me as I move onto the next leg (no pun intended) of my life journey – into the elderly zone of becoming a senior.

The Greek islands have a special place in my heart since my father was born on Rhodes Island well over a hundred years ago – so, as I turn 65, what better place to travel to feel the sun and smell the sea – the very sea he swam in as a young child?

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Memoir

Update – correction:

I just realized that Corfu is in the Ionian Sea, whereas Rhodes is in the eastern Aegean Sea. Still, I am sure I can't help but think of my father in that part of the world even though I will not be swimming in the very sea he swam as a child!

Quotes of the day:

… And remember, too, you can stay at home, safe in the familiar illusion of certainty. Do not set out without realizing that the way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, you certainty. 

If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way. Sheldon B. Kopp

My mother held my brother up as the standard for: intelligence, morality, artistic, musical and literary taste, behavior, political and religious belief … everything, really.

I took her very seriously, because I must have valued her opinion, and especially because I so desperately wanted her to acknowledge me.

However, I could not match up to the standard no matter how I tried …

… and I believe I spent most of my life trying.

And, now?

I have decided to give up trying.

And do something else with my life … Like: live without fear, and trust myself.

And, in dramatic ways it is changing the way I feel about me, and my relationships with those closest to me.

I have everything to thank for my therapist, and for my courage not to: stay at home, safe in the familiar illusion of certainty.

Nine years ago at Tamarika: And know that place for the first time

Early morning. Still dark even though the clock reads 6:00 a.m. I look away from the computer and stretch widely in my chair, arms reach upwards and feet extend out into the room. Two cats sit still and quiet – sphinxes in the early morning. Patient and waiting. As I stretch and sigh they look up slowly from their posts. Mimi on the carpet close by, and Oscar on his stand huddled down. I realize how dependent they are on me. For they await their breakfast, and I am the only one who will give it to them at this time of the day. I realize how they need me for affection, encouragement, discipline, and food.

Much like any young child.

My thoughts stray to when I was a child and I remember sitting still silently watching the adults around me. Keeping track of their movements, facial expressions and listening for intonations as they spoke, all the while gleaning information that was important for my emotional and physical survival. A shift in my mother's face, slight shadow, tightening lips, softening or glaring eyes, clenching of her jaw were some of the signs that taught me to relax around her, or become afraid, wary of what I did or said. Still learning about a brand new environment, or getting to know new people in my life, I treaded with caution, and took seriously things that were said in anger, or even with humor. Sarcasm was confusing and hurtful, because as a young child, learning to survive could be treacherous and lonely, or safe and warm depending on the reactions and behaviors of the significant adults in my life. 

As adults, how often we forget that children are sitting or standing silently by, watching our every move or unintentional wince, making assumptions and interpretations, finding meaning that is relevant to their unique and egoistic perspective.  Moment by moment they drink in our everyday reactions and behaviors, learning about their worth as future adults.

How helpful it would be for children if only we could talk them through what they might be understanding about how we are feeling.

But, then again, do we always know what we are feeling when we are being around children? 

I have never dealt well with separations of any kind. In psychological terms I guess it is called "anxiety of separation." It is a good way of describing some of what I feel when I leave, or am left behind. Anxiety. With me, though, it is often a lot stronger – like fear, for example, and is almost always connected to the fact that I must, in some way, be intrinsically bad. So that, if I feel I am too bad, I had probably better leave before I am left. Complicated sounding, I imagine. But then again, the feelings are complicated and confusing too. Of course, with my child development background, and the understanding I have acquired about emotional memory development in the brain I have a pretty good idea where it all comes from in my childhood. And, after years of therapy, I acknowledge how I have had those feelings reinforced as I grew up. I am even beginning to understand why I "found" myself in situations that reinforced those feelings over and over again even as an adult – with family members, lovers, and even with friends. Lately, I must say, understanding all of this is, in fact, mind blowing! I find myself sitting for long moments going over incidents or situations in my past, and as if awaking out of a dream, I am amazed at what I am able to understand about so much that went before. Of course, at times during these reveries and revelations I feel regret and even anger at all the wasted time spent in pain and angst, shame and guilt. But mostly, I feel a huge sense of relief – as if a boulder has been shifted from the path in my life's journey, and I can now walk through freely – with a lighter step. Understanding the absurdity at how I viewed things in the past, is one of the steps toward relearning and undoing the brainwashing of years gone by. This is my birthday present to me for this, as I enter my sixty fifth year – shedding the shame, and lifting the veil. I know it does not happen overnight, and that some of the wounds will remain as shadows haunting, hooting, and hollering now and again. But, somehow it feels as if the worst might be over – finally. For, once I have allowed myself to open up my eyes, why on earth would I shut them down again?

Quote of the day:

I think a lot of people at some point leave behind their conditioning and examine fundamental myths they've been taught. Susan Sarandon

Lately it feels as if the armor is breaking up and floating away piece by piece. Defense mechanisms and survival skills I learned as a child and youth are starting to crumble the more I find them to be unnecessary for my life as an adult here and now. For a long while I felt safer hiding inside the cocoon, behind the armor, or protected by some kind of invisible shield. But then it started to feel like I was carrying around a burden – a heavy weight, filled with fear and guilt, shame and anxiety that bore no relevance to the reality of my life and who I have become now. I have been chipping away at it for sometime now, and the absurdity of carrying it all around has overcome my need to hold onto it. 

Yesterday, as I stood out in the yard in the pale, warm sun raking away old winter leaves and exposing the beginning tips of spring bulbs in the garden, I had the strangest sensation of pieces of armor breaking free from protecting my Self, and they were flying away out and up from different angles and spaces. Almost as if an invisible shield was being penetrated by points of light. 

There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in. 
That's how the light gets in. 
That's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

I must say it is a strange sensation feeling me in the world differently than how I was taught to see me. 

There are those who say that I psychologilize too much. And I would agree that I do … just not "too" much. For while awareness can be painful when confronting my imperfections, I would rather understand why I feel what I feel, or do what I do, than live in a dark, unintentional haze of psychological ignorance. I rather like discovering what my subconscious has to offer, or what lies within the ancient, emotional memory templates of my brain. Mostly it frees me to be all I want without fear, and frankly I am sick and tired of schlepping all that burden around with me any longer.

Which brings me to the subject of my hair.

I almost always kept it long. I had a love-hate relationship with my hair. When I was young growing up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) it was too curly and fuzzy. In such a racist environment I quickly learned that my kind of hair was unacceptable in a white, "civilized" society. In those days it was bad enough that I felt like I did not belong within my complex family system, and therefore did everything I could to try and fit in externally to any social group that would have me. So, I tortured myself with lengthy, agonizing hair-straightening sessions, which were undone in a second if one drop of humidity slipped through the air around me. 

Living in Israel during my twenties and thirties, I allowed my hair to grow long and wild. I did not hate it as much as when I was younger, because it seemed to fit in more with the culture around me. Indeed, there were quite a few people with hair like mine. I felt more acceptable, and even sexually attractive, although when I spoke Hebrew my anglo-saxon accent was immediately detected as "other." Indeed, when I worked as a preschool teacher, Israeli parents would express concern that I might not teach their children to speak Hebrew appropriately. Looking back I realize what with one thing and another, my memories are laced with feelings of angst, loneliness, and longing, nay, struggling to belong to anyone, or group that would have me. 

And then I came to America.

Almost 26 years ago, I arrived in Buffalo, New York one year shy of turning 40. And I changed my life. Even though it was my decision to uproot me and my son, and leave everything behind, I arrived in America feeling like a refugee as if I was going into exile – into hiding from a painful past. People opened their arms and hearts to me, and took me in. My long, wild hair and strange, antique, British, Rhodesian accent seemed exotic and charming to everyone I met. And if I worked and studied hard, the academic community accepted and acknowledged me. For the following twenty years as my hair grew and grew, I reinvented myself academically, professionally, and personally.

But somehow it was not enough. And then one day my friend Hana and I were walking on Forbidden Drive by the Wissahickon, when she declared to me that what a person needs in this life to be happy and successful is a good therapist and an excellent hair stylist. We laughed about that, but the idea hit home. I asked her for recommendations. One was the therapist, and the other – Olivier. And I have not looked back!

Two years ago I was heading to Italy for a writer's workshop. I visited Olivier for my usual haircut. I said to him, "Make me chic, and stylish – make me look like an intellectual – a writer." He set to work, and created a new me.

As I looked at myself in the mirror I felt at home with me – finally – after all these years of searching for self worth. Strange things started to happen. Colleagues thought I had been very ill – maybe with cancer – my mother hated it with a vengeance. She was forthright, calling it "vile," and openly shuddering with disgust each time I walked in the room. People stopped telling me how cute and curly I looked, and it even put an end to some of them taking the liberty of intrusively running their fingers through my hair without my permission. More importantly, though, I felt free, mature and confident when I looked in the mirror. I had made a statement for me, and with it I banished the emotional pain of my past. 

Quite a lot for just a hair cut, I must say.

These past ten months, I decided to grow my hair again. I had fun asking "friends" in a status update on Facebook to vote on my hair – long or short. Interestingly, the men surveyed were unanimous about it being long. Women were mixed – mostly liking it short. Now, it has reached the point where I can go either way – full on long or short as in Italy. I have thought about it a lot – hence this blog post!  Indeed, as I write this piece I see that it could even serve as an outline for a Memoir Through my Hair.

As I see it, growing it long pulls me down, back into my past, and I do not want to go back there again. Cutting my hair short brings me present for all that is, and right here, right now, is where I want to be.